1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image input/output system that is applied in the case of instructing to read an original via a network and also obtaining image data read from the original, a control method of the image input/output system, and a program for implementing the control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been known a scanner that reads an image of an original. Also, there has been known a scanner including a network scan function in which the image is read from the original by the scanner according to an instruction from a PC and the PC obtains the image via a network.
Moreover, an environment of a client/server method consisting of client computers and a server installed in a company and the like has been changed in terms of security or costs. Conventionally, a system environment has been constructed with a combination of advanced client computers and the server. However, there has been a problem that the environment has cost for operation and management, such as version upgrade of application programs. Moreover, in the case where confidential data exists in a hard disk of the client computer and the like, there has been a problem of security enhancement required for each client computer.
Therefore, in order to contemplate cost reduction for the operation and the management, and the security enhancement, an idea of a thin client has emerged. The thin client means that client computers provided with minimum functions such as a display function or an input function without having a storage function such as the hard disk are used, and sources or data such as the application programs are collectively managed in the server. At the moment, various forms of thin clients have been proposed (for example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-333266).
However, if the conventional network scan function is directly applied to a server based computing environment such as a thin client environment, there has been a problem as described below.
Since all processes are performed via the server in the server based computing environment, the server receives a reading instruction from the client computer and causes the scanner to perform reading. Then image data obtained by reading the original by the scanner is sent to the server, and is further sent from the server to the client computer.
In this way, in the server based computing environment, the server intervenes in all of a series of processes, which imposes a significantly high load on the server. Moreover, it may take time for the client computer to display the image read by the scanner.